How a Muslim apartment plan in Texas was the goal of the right hysteria

America is once again producing a moral panic – this time over a neighborhood that has not even been built.

In Texas, the mere proposal of the epic city, a Muslim -friendly housing estate, which was led by the East Plano Islamic Center (Epic), has lit a political and media fire storm.

It bears all the trademarks of a familiar play book: the “Ground Zero -Mosque” hysteria from 2010, which is armed by the same actors and driven by the same understream of racism, Islamophobia and white nationalist fear.

The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, started the first Salvo in February when he released on X: “Sharia law is not allowed in Texas.”

His post came shortly after Amy Mekelburg, a right-wing extremist agitator who was known for the spread of anti-Muslim disinformation, incorrectly described the proposed development as a “Sharia city”. Instead of rejecting the smear, Abbott reinforced it and treated Muslim families as a threat to be taken seriously.

A month later, on March 25, the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, followed a formal examination of the epic city and demanded records of his developers and local officers.

Although the investigation as a routine legal step framed, it aimed at supposed violations of state law – despite no consideration of illegality or an attempt to build up a parallel legal system. This did not prevent Texas civil servants from referring to the national security language to criminalize, which is essentially a development development.

Shortly thereafter, Abbott continued to escalate the matter and instructs the developers to confirm “within seven days that they immediately stop building their illegal project”. It was an unfounded demand that caused an already produced panic fuel.

Once again, the Muslim presence is not the right to be protected, but to be examined as a threat

Two weeks later, on April 8, Paxton announced his offer to stop republican Senator John Cornyn. The next day, Cornyn asked the Ministry of Justice to examine the project and repeated the same tired Islamophobic narrative under the guise of preventing “religious discrimination”.

The fact that both men took the same Muslim housing project to fly over to the right in a hard race shows how cynical Muslims become sinful. Once again, the Muslim presence is not right to be protected, but to be examined as a threat.

This is not about zoning, infrastructure or legal compliance. It’s about who can live together – and to what conditions.

The counter -reaction rests on an unspoken but deeply racist logic: that Muslims are naturally suspicious through the organization of a community. The mere act of getting together to live, worship and raise families is classified as threatening, as if the Muslim presence itself destabilizes the American social structure.

Criminalization of the community

The controversy of the epic city offers a textbook case, how Islamophobia works – not only as a religious bigotry, but as a deeply racist system of exclusion.

The idea that Muslims have to prove their loyalty, bourgeois virtue or moderation to build houses is not only offensive – it is dehumanism. It reduces Muslim life into a potential threat that must be considered, managed or neutralized.

A proposed housing estate becomes a site of the investigation. A mosque becomes a national security concern. A neighborhood becomes a battlefield in a political campaign. None of it is new.

Fifteen years ago, Muslims tried to build the Cordoba House (Park51) – an Islamic center that is planned near the location of the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Right-wing media, politicians and self-proclaimed anti-Hharia activists also mobilized fear and conspiracy in order to transform a local construction project into a national threat.

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After years of printing, the project was finally given up, the property for the demolition was closed, and instead a luxury owner apartment is said to have been built on the site.

What distinguishes the current counter reaction is how much deeper it has been institutionalized – no longer limited to political rhetoric and media disabilities, but carried out by formal investigations and threats of the government.

At the same time, this pattern of the production of outrage reflects a broader strategy of the cynical scapegoat, which wins on elections that are not limited to the USA.

In Great Britain, similar right-wing attacks on Muslim communities broke out during the 2024 parliamentary elections, when numbers such as Nigel Farage and other right-wing extremist commentators imposed public outrage about unfounded claims that British Muslims tried to create “no-go zones” or to build separatist enclaves.

As in Texas, these conspiracies were based on long -term Islamophobic tropics in order to consider Muslim civic participation as threatening – and were used to collect the support of the election by painting Muslims as an internal threat.

It is also located on a long history of US policy, media stories and imperial activities that have conditioned the public in such a way that Muslims – both at home and abroad – to manage or eliminate as problems. Muslims were occupied both as a threat and as a test subject from monitoring mosques and guantanamo to combating programs for violent extremism (CVE) and drone warfare.

The hysteria, which now unfolds in Texas, is only the latest chapter in this story -another iteration of a post -9/11 machine that has never stopped running.

A cruel irony

This broader context of anti-Muslim-Fear championship takes on a particularly cruel dimension in the case of the epic city.

The developers have emphasized that the community would partly serve as a refuge for Afghan families who are looking for peace and stability after the flight war.

However, the war in question was not only an unfortunate reality – it was interpreted and maintained by the very US government, which represented its presence as a potential threat. The same government, which has destabilized its home countries, is now questioning her presence in a suburb of Texas.

The cognitive dissonance would be ridiculous if it weren’t that dangerous.

And this danger is not theoretical. The climate of the incitement that this outrage has driven has already led to hateful violence. From the vandalism of the mosques to the murder of six-year-old Wadea al-Fayouume in Illinois and the Magdeburg Christmas market attack in Germany, Islamophobic rhetoric from December 2024 routinely transfers the damage with the real world.

If state officials signal that Muslim projects are suspicious – if governors imply that the construction of houses could be part of a foreign conspiracy – legitimize the most hater -full elements in society and encourage them.

But this time something else happens: resistance. At the beginning of this month, Muslim and Jewish community leaders came together at a joint press conference to condemn the investigation into the epic city.

Her message was clear: this is not just a Muslim problem, but a question of civil rights. It is about organizing religious freedom, the same protection and the right of all people, their life without state harassment or defamation.

This inter -religious solidarity is important. In a climate in which Muslims are often isolated and senses, together with other marginalized groups – especially those with their own discrimination – can help disturb the narrative that Muslim communities are “different” or uniquely threatening.

It also reminds us that the true struggle not only through a project, but about the type of society in which we want to live, are not just through a project.

A defining test

Even if solidarity grows, we have to make sure not to renovate this moment. Interreligious alliances are valuable, but must not distract from the underlying systems that anchor racial and religious repression.

Zionism as a system of political and institutional power has contributed to forming both foreign and domestic policies that criminalize Muslim identity and suppresses Dissens, in particular through the Islamophobia network and pro-Israeli organizations such as the anti-defamation League (ADL).

In 2010, the ADL was one of the volume groups that opposed the Cordoba House project and contributed to fueling a wave of Islamophobic hysteria that had already packed a large part of the country.

Interreligious alliances are valuable, but must not distract from the underlying systems that anchor racial and religious repression

More than a decade later, his CEO Jonathan Greenblatt spent an apology and called this attitude a mistake. But the withdrawal came long after the damage – and in the middle of the continued support of the organization for guidelines that make the Palestinians dehumanism and strengthen Islamophobic stories.

In 2023, a coalition of more than 60 Muslim, Arabic and Allied groups condemned the AdL to fuel anti-Palestinian hatred, leading to the platform of anti-Muslim speakers and the defense of Israeli state power. This should serve as a reminder that the principle of solidarity requires a distinction: We cannot afford to rely on groups that are struggling with the systems we have to struggle.

The controversy of the epic city, as before – be it in Great Britain, New York or throughout Europe – is not a legal puzzle or a PR crisis. It’s a test. A test as to whether the United States will continue to treat Muslim presence as a naturally suspiciously or whether it is finally maintaining the constitutional principles that it claims to maintain. A test of whether American Muslims can thrive on their own conditions – or only under the conditions of constant apology, appeasement and supervision.

As with the Ground Zero Mosque, this cannot end well. But this time the outrage is not only met with silence or handover, but also with solidarity, criticism and resistance. That alone is worth paying attention to it – and building it on it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial guideline of the Middle East.